We are the 100%: An Astrologer’s take on the Occupy Wall Street Movement

By Hunter Reynolds, on October 29th, 2011

money man
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS to justifiably protest against. But what, I ask myself, is the most fundamental, cross-cultural oppression — the “meme,” if you will — that gave rise to this rant against the great vampire squid called Corporatocracy? My guess: it has something to do with flawed community.

Thich Nhat Hanh once remarked that the next Buddha would, in fact, be a community. It’s a timely Aquarian age perspective that I cannot help but sympathize with. However, having spent a good portion of my life living hip-deep in these viscous group-mind experiments, I find myself substituting the phrase “compressed egos” whenever I hear those starry-eyed words, “intentional community.” For me, community without Sangha is nothing short of Orwellian.

Don’t get me wrong. The experience of community (including the squid-like, corpgov variety) is absolutely essential — not because of what it offers, but because of what it doesn’t. Disillusionment is the entire evolutionary point of utopian Aquarian experiments: it flips us fast into the next sign, Pisces. It kills off every last shred of hope in the possibility of horizontal, egoic harmony, sending us screaming into a more timeless, meditative way of relating.

Sound a bit harsh? Looking for a more graceful dawning? Good news. Astrology has a few tips.

Forget, for a moment, about the 12 astrological signs and replace them with six polarities. One of these tense, opposing pairs of archetypal opposites takes place between the signs of Leo and Aquarius. Leo rules individual leadership; Aquarius rules group leadership. No organization of egos escapes some bickering between these two principles and, alas, no amount of group-sensitive leadership or expertly guided consensus will ever relieve this tension. What is needed is not a Leo/Aquarius compromise but the birth of a nondual awareness in the members of the group such that flawed authority — be it autocratic or democratic — is met with compassion. This compassion springs from the realization that the closest we ever get to the experience of fairness and unity amidst all this “evidence of separation” is to see its dreamlike unreality.

What do modern egos of all stripes find most unforgivable and worthy of protest? Samsara: The born-to-fail dream of Aquarian egalitarianism; the unfairness and dysfunction of living as a separate self grasping at a world-saving ideal; the un-hushable, eerie siren call from our soul to move past our collective Kumbaya ambitions and embark on a subtler, steeper and more inward climb.

But what of the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Does it make any sense for the safe-at-home-in-the-heart-of-God part of us to protest against the corrupt corporate state? Hell yes! Ever heard of “flash mob meditations?” (See accompanying article: Pure Pisces Protest). God is the 100% and she has no problem advocating for the 99%… so long as waves of compassion also go out to the 1% — the legions of cozy, compartmentalized number-crunchers that unwittingly protrude, like amoral, instinct-driven tentacles, from the heart of the squid.